Khir Toyo gets 1 year jail for graft – Former Selangor Mentri Besar Dr Mohd Khir Toyo was found guilty by the High Court here Friday of knowingly purchasing two pieces of land and a bungalow in Section 7 at a much lower price than its original value from Ditamas Sdn Bhd director Shamsuddin Hayroni in 2007. … The properties involved were purchased at RM3.5mil although Ditamas had bought it for RM6.5mil on Dec 23, 2004.

By a stroke of luck, Mrs Lee managed to keep her handbag with her, even though the robbers demanded that the couple hand over their bags.

Forgetting that the robbers had a knife, Mrs Lee said she pleaded with them to let her keep her bag. Surprisingly, the men left in the two cars without taking her handbag.

The couple said they made a police report and spent a day in Malaysia before returning to Singapore on Tuesday morning.

Back in Singapore, they made another police report, the couple told Lianhe Wanbao.

The couple, who often cross the Causeway to visit Mr Lee’s parents, said this was the first time they had been robbed in Malaysia.

But it wasn’t the first time they were involved in a traffic accident.

Last month, a blue car knocked into the right passenger door of their Suzuki just after they cleared Malaysian immigration.

A similar case of robbers using the same ploy in Malaysia to rob drivers was reported last month.

Then, a male driver lost his car and RM10,000 (S$4,100) to four men when he got out of his car after it was hit.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises Singaporeans who are travelling out of the country to always keep with them a copy of their identity card and the passport’s personal information page as proof of citizenship.

In the event where a passport is lost, they should make a police report and request for a copy, or an acknowledgement of it. Otherwise, note down the name and location of the police station.

They should then take the police report, proof of citizenship, and passport-sized photographs to the nearest Singapore High Commission, Embassy, or Consulate.

Kudos for the linkage guys. But credit rightly goes to the all the bloggers who spotted – and subsequently snarked at – Iran’s amateur hackery and the MSM who swallowed it unquestioningly. All I did was collect the various jibes, which is a compulsion of mine.

You should also learn to trust your feelings of apprehension about other people—revising them only slowly and with good reason. This may seem like a very depressing piece of advice. It is. Most of us don’t want to see the world this way, and we take great pains to avoid being rude or appearing racist, suspicious, etc. But violent predators invariably play upon this commitment to civility. The truth is that most of us are very good at detecting ulterior motives and malevolence in others. We must learn to trust these intuitions. To read the reports of rapes, murders, kidnappings and other violent crimes is to continually discover how easily good people can be manipulated by bad ones.

…

If someone puts a gun to your head and demands your purse or wallet, hand it over immediately and run. Don’t worry about being shot in the back: If your attacker is going to shoot you for running, he was going to shoot you if you stayed in place, and at point-blank range. By running, you make yourself harder to kill.

…

If you find yourself in a situation where a predator is trying to control you, the time for listening to instructions and attempting to remain calm has passed. It will get no easier to resist and escape after these first moments. The presence of weapons, the size or number of your attackers—these details are irrelevant. However bad the situation looks, it will only get worse. To hesitate is to put yourself at the mercy of a sociopath. You have no alternative but to explode into action, whatever the risk. Recognizing when this line has been crossed, and committing to escape at any cost, is more important than mastering physical techniques.

…

You should also expect that any criminal who breaks into your home when you’re inside it has come prepared to murder you and your family. To naive readers, this may sound like an extraordinarily paranoid assumption. It isn’t. Mere burglars generally make sure a house is empty before breaking in.

…

If a window shatters in the middle of the night and someone comes through it, your life is on the line. There is nothing to talk about, no offer of cash or jewelry to muster, no demands worth listening to. You must do whatever it takes to escape.

…

If you get nothing else from this article, engrave this iron law on your mind: The moment it is clear that an assailant wants more than your property (which must be assumed in any home invasion), you must escape.

…

What if your attacker has a knife to your child’s throat and tells you that everything is going to be okay as long as you cooperate by lying face down on the floor? Don’t do it. It would be better to flee the house—because as soon as you leave, he will know that the clock is ticking: Within moments, you will be at a neighbor’s home summoning help. If this intruder is going to murder your child before fleeing himself, he was going to murder your child anyway—either before or after he killed you. And he was going to take his time doing it. Granted, it is almost impossible to imagine leaving one’s child in such a circumstance—but if you can’t leave, you must grab a weapon and press your own attack. Complying in the hope that a sociopath will keep his promise to you is always the wrong move.

…

Here is how the police look at it:

From a cop’s point of view, citizens seem to keep making the same mistakes over and over, until all cases begin to sound alike…. The objective of a violent criminal is to control you, emotionally and physically. Everything he does—his threats and promises—is intended to terrify and control you. The more control you give to the violent criminal, even if you see it as temporary, the less likely you are to escape. For most crime victims, their temporary cooperation backfired into full control over them. Time works against the victim and for the criminal. The longer you stall, the more you talk, the deeper you sink.

(S. Strong. Strong on Defense. pp. 49-50).

…

If you are present while a place of business is being robbed and you cannot immediately escape, it makes sense to obey orders—to freeze, to get down on the floor—because the focus is not on you. Most robbers just want to get the money from the register and run. However, if they begin taking hostages or shooting people, you should immediately do whatever it takes to escape. Better to dive through a plate-glass window than to allow yourself to be herded to the back of the store.

8.) “The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”

7) “When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union — like public housing in the United States — look decrepit within a year or two of their construction…”

5) “When the United States was formed in 1776, it took 19 people on the farm to produce enough food for 20 people. So most of the people had to spend their time and efforts on growing food. Today, it’s down to 1% or 2% to produce that food. Now just consider the vast amount of supposed unemployment that was produced by that. But there wasn’t really any unemployment produced. What happened was that people who had formerly been tied up working in agriculture were freed by technological developments and improvements to do something else. That enabled us to have a better standard of living and a more extensive range of products.”

4) “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.”

2) “The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly — whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.”

1) “(T)he supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number — for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs — jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.”

Summary of Me

scottthongblog[at]yahoo[dot]com

Seeking truth, hating lies.

Oh my labels!

Free thinking, but not a Free Thinker.
A Christian and a scientist, but not a Christian Scientist.
Believing in a universal church, but not a Catholic.
Trying to be a saint in these latter days, but not a Latter Day Saint.
A witness for Jehovah, but not a Jehovah's Witness.
Sumitted to God, but not a Muslim.
Seeking knowledge, but not a Gnostic.
Rational in thinking, but not a Rationalist.
Upholding humanity, but not a Humanist.
A supporter of liberation, but not a Liberal.
A supporter of democracy, but not a Democrat.
Acknowledging the importance of social values, but not a Socialist.
Seeking and valuing truth, but not a Truther.